95 years ago: Don't believe war rumors, gossip

Each Monday, we turn to a day in the newspaper's history for a look at what the Editorial Board found worthy of comment. We will preserve the punctuation and capitalization of the original editorial column. Here is what we wrote on Dec. 17, 1917:

Repeating rumors

The person who repeats a war rumor is just about as guilty of falsehood as the person who started it. The secretaries of war and navy have been given positive assurance that no important news, particularly of any catastrophe which may occur, will be withheld from the public. The truth is, such things could hardly be suppressed even if the authorities tried.

Every authentic fact that is known in this country outside the narrow circle of official life at Washington is known and used by the great news associations which are always hungry for information, and are under no obligations to suppress facts. (...)

Suppose a transport should be sunk and hundred of lives lost. It would simply be an impossibility to keep that from the public, because the details would be flashed over the wires, inquiries would be instituted, movements would be started, scores of officers would be officially notified, traders on the stock exchange would get the tip, panics would result, and in two days the whole country would know it. It is for just such reasons that the authorities would give out the information as soon as they got it.

All this is so plain to everybody who knows even the elements of news gathering that he pays not the slightest attention to street rumors of any kind. He knows if anything happens he will get it over the wire.

And when a man hears somebody tell of some suppressed disaster - claiming to have got a tip from some inside source - it is a dead sure thing that he is either willfully assisting in the propaganda which the enemy uses as a means of undermining our morale, or he is the innocent, credulous victim of such propaganda. If he is of average intelligence or better, the first supposition is the correct one. If he is below the average, kindly but emphatic instruction to set him right should be promptly administered.

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95 years ago: Don't believe war rumors, gossip

Each Monday, we turn to a day in the newspaper's history for a look at what the Editorial Board found worthy of comment. We will preserve the punctuation and capitalization of the original editorial

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